Final Fantasy II
Final Fantasy II is the black sheep in the Final Fantasy series. Synopsis The 2 in Final Fantasy 2 is false - about as accurate as the Pro in ProJared. This is actually Final Fantasy 4. Jared shows the cart for the actual Final Fantasy II. Final Fantasy sold so well that they were already ready to sell a sequel. Since Final Fantasy II was set to come out so late on the NES system, the SNES was coming out and Nintendo of America translated 4 instead to not cause confusion - causing decades of confusion ever since. Jared has a reproduction kart, and didn't get to see it until Final Fantasy Origins. Jared has never finished Final Fantasy II. He will play the Gameboy Advanced version. This is very different from the original. The characters can be named, but they now have portraits to them. They already have personalities - sort of. Everyone starts by dying.It is the first fight, so it isn't bad here. Final Fantasy II is dark. It is full of death, and loss. The four heroes were retreating from their home town that was under attack. They didn't make it. They wake up, but Leon has gone missing. They join the rebels. This came one year after Final Fantasy I, and was an engaging plot for its time. This game has a keyword system, allowing the players to 'learn' the word, so anyone can be asked about it. It is a great idea, but it isn't used very well. Only one or two words matter to each character, and having to scroll through every irrelevant word is annoying. Adding some flair to NPCs would have been better. Instead, everyone looks at the characters as if they are idiots, with a single ? response. Nothing would change if the system was removed entirely. The party is equipped so Jared doesn't need to buy anything. However, he went in the wrong direction and died early without saving! Jared decides to grind instead. Most Final Fantasy games grind in the same way. However, Final Fantasy 2 has a different system, where each weapon and skill needs to be leveled up individually. It is a good idea. Guy starts with an axe, but he can be given a bow and work in the backline. Jared likes a lot about this game in theory, but overall it is not a good game. Sure it introduced a lot to the series, and it should be remembered for that, but the gameplay is horrible. The weather system is great - or it would be if anything supported it. Why is there a rod skill? Being proficient in daggers is worthless as there is nothing to support it later on in the game. Or, simply go unarmed, because fists become the strongest weapon, and stay that way through the whole game. Spells have to be leveled up as well. There is no Cure 2. Cure has to be leveled up. Each spell needs to be used a dozen times before it levels up. Imagine doing that for every spell in the game. Jared chose about four spells for each character and ignored the rest. Each stat increases on its own, such as strength, intelligence, everything. To gain hit points, the character needs to be injured, but healing negates this increase! So, you get hurt and stay hurt. It is up to random chance if any stats increase at all. There is no traditional boost in level. The weakest enemies are just as good as the game's strongest monsters. Fight the weakest monsters and beat each other up! Jared punches himself in the face. Jared only grinded a bit at the start, and never had to again. The party will either be too weak, or completely overpowered. There is no in-between. Jared should have just faked punching himself! The characters already have relationships and personalities, but none of the characters have any personality throughout the entire game. Firion is nothing more than the 'main guy'. Maria and Leon are siblings. Maria is 'the girl'. The secondary cast end up doing more than the main cast, but all end up dying somehow. There is just one exception where character development happens. Jared sets up as 'Guy speak beaver'. Even the soundtrack is bad and repetitive. There are a few songs that are good. You know some of the songs are bad when they aren't remastered well. Even the chocobo song sounds bad in this version. It will drive you insane. This has some of the worst dungeon design ever in a video game. They are designed to waste your time. There are dead ends everywhere. Many branching paths go up or down numerous floors before you realized you wasted your time fighting annoying monsters along the way. Then there are random rooms scattered around in the dungeons. These are also dead ends and have ridiculously high encounter rates. It is typical to have 2-3 battles in these rooms, wasting more of your time, but they might have an item so you must check them. Sometimes there are multiple rooms together. Only one progresses the player further, while the rest are trap rooms designed to waste more time. This isn't clever! This is an 8 year old's dungeon master's first level. Story advancement is mostly talk to one person, and go back to talk to the original person, before going to talk to another person. Then do another sucky dungeon where one of the side characters die. The world is small, so there is a lot of backtracking. Jared likes a lot of parts of the dragon, such as reviving a dragon, being swallowed by Lathiathan. It is pretty grounded in reality, until the final boss. After you kill the emperor, he comes back in demon form, because he sold his soul to Satan! Jared didn't have much fun while playing this game. It boils down to which version of this game sucks the least. Avoid the NES version at all costs. There is a glitch to make grinding less difficult, but it is long and slow, and not fun. The PS1 makes things look and sound better. The GBA does the same, but adds more dungeons at the end. It's nice for anyone who enjoyed it, but why would you want to. Play the remake on PSP. It is the best version of hot garbage. It is the black sheep of the series for good reason. Jared hated almost every second of the game. Jared gives this game a punching yourself in the face out of ten. Every pain is self inflicted. It suffers from boring gameplay choices, boring characters, horrific dungeon design, and being rushed out the door. The dungeons are the worst. Jared wanted the level up system to work, but it isn't supported well. It is a good idea, and was used in the Saga series, but in this game it has no meaningful impact. The game was brave to reinvent itself like the story, but it needed to be fun, rather than different. Most people skipped this game, and good on them. They should treat this game like the characters treat dead party members. They run away from them! BYE! Category:ProReview Category:Videos